THE NF-W YORKER ka forhumant ngs, and mortals being held . I " In morta memory. ^ FTER we cleaned n. up the breakfast dishes, my sister and I went outside. We walked around the house, surveying the lawn our parent8 had smoothed and extend- ed, the woods they'd thinned, the paths thev'd carved for walks. Then we found our step- mother on the new patio out front. She was sitting in a la\vn chair, listening on her portable radio to the House Assassinations Committee. She'd been listening to it all month, she said. My sister and I pulled up aluminum lawn chairs and formed a half circl with her, our faces up to the sun that trickled through the trees. I remem- bered coming home from school at lunch- time during a certain spring of my childhood to find my mothf>r lis- tening to the HUAC hearings then being broadcast. Years later, \vhen I sa\v a famous documen- tary on HUAC and Joe McCarthy, I misunderstood what I saw, and thought it must be a continuation of the lunch- time sho\v my mother had liked. My father appeared with his camtxa and started circling us to get the photos he wanted-of me and my sister, then my sister and stepmother, then the three of us together. He asked us to turn our heads, then to look as if we were talking to one another. When my sister protested having her picture taken, he said what he really wanted was a picture of the house and the pots of tomatoes and flowers on the stone steps. \Ve were only serving as figures in the foreground, for scale. F nough. After a few more pictures, my sister and stepmother had had enough. My stepmother turned off the radio and we all walked in to the woods to see the new gazebo. The gazebo sits on a cliff deep in the woods overlooking a rushing brook-a good spot for trout, my fa- ther says. The previous winter, vandals had destroyed the original gazebo, and now, after the insurance claims had J L. I 37 ..., '\ # , ',{ .: : ' J " :< . . . ...... . .. ... , r: .... .1 ... .. '\ ' " "t ' . .< ,\ . \ t. j '. .' \. ,1 ,,' . :.. I >{ J l' Å t "" "'" , : .:. ..t;.:..gy". ,.... ...... ... ""....; :.. . ...... v "t l ".., ... I i,.. ;i '1' . >f"""'----' " t t ra {1 ;..:'.',.'.. .. , .:t ..; ... "".:...'-t ?{ ) , ,, . h..$- "V ." }'" : :. :.., '. . :.: . :. . ........ .e. l :/. .." k { '\ '" , '" .. ... . VV ^... ..... .-.... :"": "', . + . ,.. "..': :;iV\ , ,.' . , ;10'';'... '\00:1:-... .,,"" ...... oQo. ...:. ... ... : ((If I understood htm correctly, North Dakota has just in'[;'aded South Dakota." . been made and my stepmother had been diligent in looking for bargaIns in gazebos, there was this new screened- in structure, bigger and sturdier, better in every way. The roof was yellow and whIte, like a circus tent. We ad- mired it from the outside, then went in. The furniture \vas new also, red- wood and chrome \vith yellow cush- ions. The chairs had been delivered ready to assemble, my stepmother said, with some J1eCessdry nuts and bolts left out; she'd made three extra trips to Pittsfield to collect the missing parts. My father took one more photo; then I asked for the camera to take a picture just of my parents. I stood as far back as I could in the gazebo, and my father told me to stop fooling around with his camera. "It's focussed," he said. "I focussed it for you." But I had to bring together the double image between my parents of the pine trees and the screen, and a little bit of my father's shoulder. After that, I handed the camera back to my father. "How many shots are left on that roll?" my stepmother asked, and my father said there was only one. . "Then take a picture of the sound of the brook," she said. My father said he would use the last shot for a study of the \voods, and he went to the door of the gazebo I told hÎ111 I guessed he would really take a last pIcture of the three of us sitting on the new furniture. "No," he said. "You can't get a picture through the screens." I could tell that my sister was get- ting restless, that she was reclòy to move on to friends \vith whom we were visiting for the rest of the week- "- end. I didn't mind any of it-the ga- zebo, the woods, the photographs. I wanted copies of everyone of them. After all, I was going so far away. -LAURA FURlV1AN . MOST FASCINATING NEWS STORY OF THE WEEK [The following item, reprinted in its en- tirety, IS froln the Lafayette (1 nd.) J OUr- nal &' Courter] Los ANGELES (AP)-Pamela Segarra was Just walking along a downtown street ,vhen a running man thrust a brown paper bag into her hands and said, " T k h ." a e tIS.